Hawaii Fact 28 of 50: How many people visit Hawaii each year?

As tourism is a key component to Hawaii’s economy, the state government keeps detailed statistics on visitor arrivals, how long they stay and how much they spend. The most complete published report is from 2007. It’s 167 pages of more detail than you could ever want to know about Hawaii visitors. So, let’s glean some interesting statistics from this monster report.

– 7,627,819 people visited Hawaii in 2007. Now let’s look at which islands they visited, noting that visitors can and do island hop:

Oahu: 4,823,874

Maui: 2,580,361

Hawaii’s Big Island: 1,739,458

Kauai: 1,372,682

Lanai: 105,499

Molokai: 86,579

- The average length of stay was 9.19 days

- The average party size traveling to Hawaii was 2.14 people.

- 59.7% of people travel independently to Hawaii, e.g. not traveling to Hawaii on a package or organized tour.

- 82% of visitors came to Hawaii for the purposes of vacation, honeymoon or getting married.

- The highest amounts of visitors came in June, July, August, and December. The least visited months were April, May, September, October and November. (Note: the least visited months are really some of the best times to visit Hawaii.)

As you probably already know the economy has curtailed travel worldwide and Hawaii has certainly felt those effects. So, as we look at these 2007 statistics, bear in mind that the current numbers are down, probably somewhere in the range of about 10%.

If you are nerdy like me, you can drill down in the 2007 Hawaii visitors report for much more detail. If perusing the 2007 report isn’t enough for you, then you can access the annual reports from 1999 here. Please comment if you find something interesting from the report. Also, please comment if you were a part of the 2007 statistics. I was. Andy and I were independent visitors to Maui, Molokai, and Lanai that year.

@ Kris – I do believe that form is the source for most of the data. I don’t know where else they’d get it. Since the back of the form is optional, the data can’t be 100% accurate, but I guess comparing year to year for trends is like comparing apples to apples. I was also surprised with the 9.19 days of stay. I’ve gone for a few as 5 days and as many as 14 days. How about you?

@ Rick – just curious, why do you find that hard to believe? For the life of me, I can’t figure out why more people don’t visit the Big Island to see the active lava flow. I mean, can it get any more exciting than that?!